The Old Familiar Sting

Note: I started this before the announcement that Zambrano is moving to the bullpen and finishes it afterward, so this might be kinda weird.

The Cubs are off to an uninspiring 5-9 start, and currently down 0-2 in a 4 game series against the Mets, having previously lost 2 of 3 at home to the absolutely putrid Astros (they have a .249 on base percentage for the year). As a general rule, 14 games isn't really enough time to say with any sort of certainty how good a team is, but the ways in which they've lost make the beginning of 2010 feel like an extension of the worst parts of 2010, and seem to validate the most pessimistic assessments of what the Cubs would be from before the season. Even with Ted Lilly still rehabbing in the minors, their rotation has been pretty good thus far, as it was in 2009 when it led MLB in quality starts. But the offense has been mediocre overall and non-existent lately, with 1 total run scored thus far in the Mets series, and the bullpen has been horrendous.

Take out opening day, when Carlos Zambrano got rocked in Atlanta, and The Cubs' rotation has been solid thus far, posting a starter's ERA of 3.49. Even Carlos Silva--having come into the season recovering from injury, seemingly not in the best of shape, and having been cast off from Seattle in exchange for Milton Bradley--has had two really good starts (update: actually has had a 3rd good one while I've been writing this), giving up just 1 ER over 13 IP. The bullpen, however, has an ERA of 6.15, with a combined W-L record of 1-6. The best reliever to this point, has probably been Sean Marshall, who's done a bit of everything, having appeared in close & late situations, and having done some long relief as well. Carlos Marmol has been okay, but does have 1 blown save. John Grobow, originally penciled in as the set-up man, has struggled mightily, and the once highly-touted Jeff Samardzjia looks like he probably shouldn't be in the majors. This is a problem, seeing as he's 25 now, not getting any younger and hasn't yet distinguished himself as a major league pitcher at all. He hasn't really been able to develop any good pitches to complement his fastball.

It was just announced today that Lou Pinella is moving Zambrano to the bullpen to be an 8th inning guy. For all the reasons above, the Cubs definitely need to get some help from somewhere, but this still seems like a dumb and somewhat panicky move to me. While he's off to a somewhat crappy start, he's still obviously a well-above average starter, if perhaps not an elite one. By moving him to the bullpen--if this is a permanent move--you're limiting him to maybe 80-ish innings instead of 200+ were he to be healthy the entire year. Relievers simply aren't as valuable for a team because they aren't out there as much in total. This also, obviously, weakens the rotation a bit. The way it's started out, that wouldn't seem to be a huge issue, but Carlos Silva is not going to have starts as good as these all year, nor is Tom Gorzelanny going to go without allowing an earned run as he did in his first start. Ted Lilly will figure to be good, as he has been ever since he's been with the Cubs (he turned out to be a really good signing--Jim Hendry has his moments), but never quite know for sure what a guy is going to give you coming off of injury. Really, I think the best hope for the Cubs bullpen is for someone to simply come out of nowhere and play above their level. Right now it doesn't seem like that's going to be any of the 3 rookies currently in the Cubs bullpen. Theoretically, it could be prospect Andrew Cashner, who might be called up in the not-too-distant future.

The Cubs offense has, shall we say, sputtered out of the gate. As I'm writing this, the Cubs have plated 9 against the Mets in Game 3 of the series, but they had a combined 3 in the 3 games prior to that. Marlon Byrd has produced nicely thus far and has hit 3 HRs. Derrek Lee has 3 long balls as well, but hasn't hit for average much in recent games. Struggling the most offensively right now is Aramis Ramirez, who right at this moment is hitting .131 (0-for-6 in this Mets game), seems to be consistently getting behind in the count, and simply doesn't look right in his at-bats. Alphonso Soriano has had some awful ABs as well in the early going, although he's come around a bit, at least hitting the ball. Defensively he's misplayed several playable balls, and Lou Pinella has taken to switching in Tyler Colvin in late innings (or Fukudome, if he didn't start). Which is fine, I guess, but it takes away a possible pinch-hitting option if you need one, and obviously a guy making about $20 million a year should ideally be able to play 9 innings. Maybe the most encouraging thing as far as Cubs hitters goes, is the fact that Starlon Castro is currently hitting close to .400 for the Tennessee Smokies. As I wrote in my previous Cubs post, if he gets called up and is good enough to stay as a regular starter, that completely changes the calculus of the lineup, as it gets rid of the Fontenot/Baker platoon at 2nd. Not that they're both terrible, because they're not, but neither of them really screams starter on a playoff team.

We're less than 10% of the way through the season at the moment, but it's hard not to look at the current weaknesses of the team and see how this team can contend throughout the year. Moving Zambrano to the bullpen is certainly a dramatic move and will certainly shake things up. Personally I think it looks awful on paper, but baseball is weird and weird things happen. If they can consistently get starters going 6+IP only allowing a couple of runs--as they have been--Zambrano turns out to be a good set-up man, Marmol converts a good percentage of his saves, and they can muster up outs from somewhere for the rest of what they need, they'll be in position to win most games if they can plate a few runs. We'll see.

Rites of Spring Part II

Part II: Pitching

Cubs starting pitching was actually pretty good last year, and was more than anything what prevented the season from going completely off the rails last year. They actually led the league in quality starts (at least 6 IP, no more than 3 ER) in spite of everyone except Randy Wells missing time on the DL. Carlos Zambrano was managed to finish at a decent 3.77 ERA, but was inconsistent overall and finished with just 9 wins. Clearly the Cubs are going to want more out of him as the ace of the staff. Supposedly, like Geovany Soto, he's gotten himself in much better shape during the off-season, although his temperament on the mound is going to continue to be called into question. The Cubs' lowest ERA belonged, surprisingly, to Randy Wells at 3.05. Obviously, it would be fantastic if he were to repeat that, but nobody is predicting as much. The Cubs cut ties with the sometimes spectacular but often hurt and/or ineffective Rich Harden in the off-season, and Ted Lilly will begin the season on the DL, so on opening day the rest of the rotation will be made up of Ryan Dempster, Tom Gorzelanny, and Carlos Silva. The Cubs have said consistently that Lilly should be ready to return some time in mid-April. Given their history with pitching injuries, it's hard not to take any sort of injury prognostications from the Cubs with a grain of salt, but it does seem as though Lilly has had no real setbacks.

Carlos Silva beat out Sean Marshall and Jeff Samardzija for the 5th starter spot with a good spring. Good spring or no, the idea of Silva in the rotation terrifies me somewhat. At the time he was traded for Bradley's contract, the conventional wisdom seemed to be that the Cubs weren't going to do much of anything with him, except maybe bury him in long relief. Really he was always just a means to get rid of Bradley which was an absolute must. Silva is coming off of a year in which he made just 8 appearances due to a major injury, and even in the year before that he was totally ineffective with an ERA above 6. Theoretically though, he'll only be in the rotation for a few weeks, unless he earns a permanent spot there or unless Gorzelanny is worse than he is.

The bullpen looks like the team's biggest question mark right now. Kevin Gregg is gone, and so the the closer job will belong to Carlos Marmol from the outset. His issues have been well documented. When he can keep the ball in the strike zone, he's nigh unhittable, but at times that seems impossible for him to do. Even still, Marmol has established himself as at least a good bullpen arm, if not a consistently great one. After the closer's spot, things get a lot murkier. Right now, it seems like the set-up man is going to be John Grabow, who had end of '09 with the Cubs after coming over from the Pirates. Nothing about him really exudes set-up man on a contending team though. The set-up man was intended to be Angel Guzman, who is now going to be out for the year with another major arm injury, something which has plagued him throughout his career. On opening day, the Cubs will have three rookies in the bullpen: Justin Berg, Esmailin Caridid, and James Russell. Caridad and Berg were both up for short stints in 2009, and were pretty good for whatever that small sample size is worth. Caridad also pitched 12 games this spring without allowing an earned run. Russell hasn't thrown a pitch in the majors whatsoever. Maybe everything will come together and they'll have really good years, but it certainly seems like the Cubs may have to throw together some money within their tight budget constraints to get an extra veteran arm if they manage to stay in contention come July.

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The 2010 Cubs have a lot of question marks, and it seems like they're right on the precipice of their main bats simply being too old for them to really be considered a championship contender. Still, some of those same main pieces had awful years last year, even accounting for some decline due to age, and the law of averages would suggest that there might be something of a bounce back this year. The Cubs are also in a weak division, with the Astros and Pirates solidly in rebuilding mode (although I guess the Pirates didn't really have anything built up beforehand), the Reds and Brewers probably decent but not playoff worthy, and the Cardinals a clear favorite, but far from perfect. The season starts tomorrow at 3:00 against the Braves.

Rites of Spring

I haven't found myself too motivated to update this thing lately. In my drafts is a half-finished Crazy Heart review that I'm not sure is ever going to be actually finished. For the record, I agree with what seems to be the consensus about it: Pretty good movie, the best part of which is Jeff Bridges' performance. I'm still going to finish my Cowboy Bebop posts, but haven't found the time to watch episodes for it, and I'm still going to finish my FF7 posts, but I've been off playing other stuff. So, with opening day just around the corner this coming Monday, here's a Cubs preview post to attempt to break out of this blogging malaise. Really, I'd be lying if I said I was that optimistic about the prospects of the Cubs' season, but it's nevertheless hard not to get excited for the return of baseball in general.

PART I: OFFENSE

Most computer projections that I've seen (i.e. PECOTA, CHONE) have the Cubs projected at somewhere around 78 wins for 2010. As much as I hate to admit it, in a lot of ways, this makes perfect sense. The Cubs managed just 83 wins last year and are returning pretty much the same club as last year, except that will be a year older on a team that's already relatively long in the tooth. With the Cubs finally pretty much hitting the apex of what they can reasonably spend as a team (the payroll has more than doubled over the last decade), and with the team bogged down with a lot of expensive, backloaded contracts, the team wasn't a huge player in free agency in the off-season. Their biggest acquisition was Marlon Byrd, who will come in to play CF, shifting Fukudome back to right. Byrd has been brought in to replace Milton Bradley, who the Cubs traded to Seattle in exchange for Carlos Silva, probably the best result possible amidst a lot of bad options for getting rid of Bradley. Silva's contract is really bad too, but on balance, they actually save a bit of money in the deal. Bradley will start the year as the Mariners' clean-up hitter. Good luck with that, Seattle. Setting aside the fact that he's not crazy, Bryd's arrival in Chicago isn't all-together dissimilar to Bradley's. Like Bradley, Byrd comes to Chicago coming off of career-high power numbers (20 HRs, 89 RBIs) playing for the Rangers. For the whole of his career tough, Byrd has been a roughly average player (99 OPS+). He's a pretty capable defensive player, though, which should shore up what is at times a brutal looking Cubs outfield, and he's played all three outfield positions during his career.

Most of the buzz around the Cubs during spring training was focused around Starlin Castro, who's just barely 20 years old and is now the Cubs top hitting prospect and pretty high up on many people's lists of the best prospects in baseball. Castro had a very good spring hitting the ball, but will nevertheless start the year in the minors. Were he able to come up at some point this year and play at a high level as a shortstop, though, that would change the calculus of the Cubs lineup quite a bit. Castro at SS would shift Ryan Theriot to 2nd, which is his natural position. It would also bump out of the lineup what the Cubs currently have at second base, that being a fairly uninspiring platoon of Mike Fontenot and Jeff Baker. Baker actually had a really good second half of 2009 after coming over to the Cubs from Colorado, with rate stats of .305/.362/.448/.810, but there's nothing to really suggest that he would put up numbers anywhere close to that over a full season. He's had a really lackluster spring as well, which might further the case for him coming back down to earth this year.

Another Rookie is going to make the opening day roster though, Tyler Colvin, who played a little bit with the major league team last year. Colvin is a former 1st round draft pick of the Cubs, and the fact that he's actually making it to the majors already puts him ahead of where other recent Cub 1st round picks have gotten, although there is some question about how big his upside is. As documented at Fan Graphs recently, Colvin's on-base percentage hasn't been that good thus far, and there are questions about his plate discipline. The biggest reason he's making the team is that he's had a very good spring. Colvin making the roster means that Micah Hoffpauir will be left off, something I'm not really that sad about. Hoffpauir is something of a liability defensively. He was on the team last year mostly to provide an offensive spark off the bench, similar to how veteran pinch-hitter Daryle Ward was used while he was a Cub, but he didn't turn out to be that successful at it. Also joining the outfield is Xavier Nady, who is coming off of Tommy John's surgery. Snagging pitchers coming off of major surgery for cheap is something that Jim Hendry has had a penchant for throughout his tenure. Sometimes it's worked (Ryan Dempster), other times it hasn't (Wade Miller). We'll see how it works out with a position player. Nady had a really good 2008, hitting almost 100 RBIs while splitting time between Pittsburgh and the Yankees. The biggest issue at this point is that he can't throw with anywhere near full strength right now, so he might be relegated to pinch-hitting for the near future (he's been playing DH in the Cactus League).

Ultimately though, it's hard to see any of the Cubs' new faces mattering as much as whether or not the old faces can turn it around. Alfonso Soriano plainly can't be the starting left fielder and put up the putrid numbers he did last year (.241/.303/.423/.726). The fact that his knee was reportedly still gimpy when he showed up for camp this spring isn't a promising sign, and neither is the fact that he's going to be 34 this year. Geovany Soto also had an awful year hitting, a night-and-day difference from his fantastic rookie campaign. He lost a ton of weight in the offseason, to the point where reporters at the Cubs Convention in January said that they almost couldn't recognize him. Hopefully he can translate being in better shape into more success in the batter's box. Sabermetric disciples have also cited his BABIP last year (batting average of balls in play), as evidence that some of it was just simply really bad luck. Another injury to Aramis Ramirez would also seemingly de-rail the Cubs' season. They added Chad Tracy to their bench, which would hopefully help to stop the Cubs from having to put out a really cartoonish lineup where somebody like Bobby Scales is starting at 3rd, but it's still hard to imagine the lineup having much pop without Ramirez in the heart of the order.

Still to come: Part II -- Pitching

As usual, stats are from Baseball Reference unless otherwise noted.

2009 Cubs: Autopsy Report

Its been quite a while since I've written about the Cubs, but what has there been to write about really? My last post was in mid-August, when the season was on the precipice of falling apart, and after that point the Cubs season seemed to slip into a sort of catatonia, which the monumental tailspin that was looking possible as the Milton Bradley fiasco heated up not coming to pass, but with the team also never seriously threatening to get back into the race. Bradley--who, with two full years left on his deal, is perhaps now destined to go down as one of the worst signings in Chicago sports history--was eventually suspended for his behavior and his vague accusations of racism coming from Cubs fans. A few other players were shut down with injuries that they likely could've played through were the team still playing meaningful baseball. Even still, the openings left by these players were filled out for the remainder of the year mostly by "quadruple-A" type players who have been lingering around in Iowa for a while. As such, it was hard to even drum up any excitement for next year watching the team in September, as there wasn't really any sort of crop of prospects chomping at the bit for big-league at bats.

The team eventually finished the year 83-78, which actually gives them their first streak of three years with a winning record since the early '70s, more an indictment of how inept the team was for much of its history than anything else. A just over .500 record and missing the playoffs is plainly unacceptable, given the money that was spent on building the roster, and given that in many ways the Cubs' front office completely hedged their bets on winning either last year or this year. Now, the Cubs have a lot of players locked into expensive, long-term deals who probably aren't going to get any better or, in some cases, may not even play in a Cub uniform again. The team's new ownership isn't expected to be able to add much to the already massive payroll, as it tries to deal with paying off some of the debt from the purchase, and looks at options to renovate the stadium. In order to keep the team competitive in the coming years, its going to take some creative moves with limited resources, and I'm not sure that Jim Hendry--who as of right now is still going to be the team's GM next year--is up to that task.

No player better exemplifies the failed expectations of the team as a whole moreso than Milton Bradley, the team's biggest free agent signing of the off-season. Bradley, oft-injured throughout his career managed to get on the field for 124 games, but hit for an OPS barely above the league average, and manged just 40 RBIs despite batting mostly in the middle of the order (he moved to the #2 spot late in the year, and seemed to fare a bit better there). Other free agents from last year that were discussed as other options for a left-handed power bat were Adam Dunn (38 HRs, 105 RBIs with the Nationals) and Raul Ibanez (34 HRs, 93 RBIs with the Phillies). Both of them are also true left-handed hitters, as opposed to Bradley, a switch-hitter who is actually a worse hitter from the left side, despite being brought in to be an RBI producer against right-handed pitching. Beyond his bad production, his the effect of his constant negative attitude and oft-times laziness on the field can't be discounted. Normally I stray away from stuff like "clubhouse presence", which is unquantifiable, and which I'm not really in a position to know anything about except secondhand from columnists and reporters who sometimes don't seem to know what they're talking about either in spite of their greater access. With Bradley, though, it was stark enough and obvious enough to seem to be a significant distraction for the team. Bradley still has two years left on his deal, and now face a situation in which they seemingly have to trade him, even though its difficult to see how. The Giants expressed some tepid interest immediately after the season, but nothing concrete has come from it up to this point. Any trade made would most certainly involve the Cubs eating the bulk of the salary.

There were many, many, other problems besides Bradley, however. Alfonso Soriano, another owner of a huge contract, had his worst year in a Cubs uniform, hitting a meager .241 with 20 HRs and missing a big chunk of the back end of the year with an injury. He'll be 34 next year, an age at which hitters often start to see a marked decline in their hitting. Was this year a fluke, or has that already started with Soriano? After winning NL Rookie of the Year last year, Geovany Soto hit a putrid .218 and ended up splitting playing time with journeyman Koyie Hill at the end of the year. Kosuke Fukudome had a marginally better year than 2008 at the plate, but still only hit .259 with 11 HRs. Finally, there's Aaron Miles, who made a couple of million dollars this year to fill in for Mark DeRosa after he was traded. He played below replacement level and, pathetically, hit 5 RBIs all year. A couple of days ago, the Cubs signed Rudy Jaramillo, the former Ranger's hitting coach, who has a ton of respect around the league. Its certainly plausible that he could correct some flaws that have crept into the batting stances of some or all of the above players, but really the lineup as a whole has to be dramatically better and, as I mentioned earlier, financial constraints are probably going to limit how different the lineup can really look next year. One name that's popped up as a possible target for the Cubs is Mike Cameron, who at 36 still has decent pop in his bat and still plays a good defensive center field. Without a real possibility of signing an absolute top-tier free agent, Cameron would probably be a good addition.

The best component of the team throughout the year was its starting pitching. Even though four of its five main starters (Ryan Dempster, Ted Lilly, Carlos Zambrano, and Rich Harden) spent part of the year banged up, and the fifth (Randy Wells) started the year in AAA, the starting pitching was remarkably consistent. Even Rich Harden, who had a ton of issues with high pitch counts in his starts, managed a 9-9 record and a slightly above-average ERA. Cubs starters averaged about 5.97 innings per start, with a 3.71 ERA. In other words, they basically averaged a quality start. The bullpen wasn't horrible either, but had a higher ERA of 4.11 and its back end of Carlos Marmol and Kevin Gregg both went through significant periods where they struggled mightily closing out games. Marmol clearly regressed from where he was in 2008, still proving hard to hit, but giving up 24 more walks in 13 fewer innings. Gregg was passable for much of the year and managed to amass 23 saves, but collapsed in the 2nd half of the year and finished with a 4.72 ERA. One thing that can be said about the bullpen is that--in a year in which there weren't many true prospects ready to come up in the Cubs's system--it did provide a couple of possible bright spots. 25 year olds Esmailin Caridid and Justin Berg both got to pitch some down the stretch and put up good numbers, albeit in very small sample sizes. You can find an infinite number of relievers who started out their careers with a good dozen or so innings and turned out to be nothing, but I'm straining to come up with something positive to write here.

Basically, it seems to me that if the Cubs are going to be any good in 2010, a couple of players have to have a year that comes completely out of nowhere. They kind of got that guy this year in Randy Wells. They may have to somehow find a couple more guys like that next year who excel beyond what they were projected to be, because there isn't much to be done by way of free agency, and the team as constructed seems to be slipping into a malaise of mediocrity. Uh... go Cubs go?

Dark Skies Over Wrigleyville

The Cubs are sitting at 60-57, now 6 full games behind the Cardinals in the NL Central. The biggest continued reason for optimism is that their remaining schedule pits them against a lot of bad teams and gives them a lot of home games. Problem is, the Cubs are currently in San Diego playing one of said bad teams and have lost the first two with the finale toady. The Cubs took a 1-0 lead into the bottom of the 9th on Friday, only to have Kevin Gregg first blow the save then give up a 3-run homer to take the loss. Afterward, Lou Pinella announced that Gregg would be replaced as closer by Carlos Marmol. I was advocating Marmol as closer on this blog at the beginning of the year, but that seems like a lonnnng time ago at this point? Would Marmol be any better than Kevin Gregg right now? Its hard to say. His ERA is almost a full run lower, but his WHIP is actually significantly higher. He still hasn't been able to find his control for any significant stretch of the season, with a cartoonish 52 walks in 56 1/3 innings (with 11 hit by pitches to go along with them!). Its possible that Angel Guzman would be a viable option, and he has the lowest ERA amongst Cubs bullpen pitchers who have been there for the whole season, though he gave up 2 runs himself in the 8th inning last night.

Really, though, this is a Cubs offense that's expected to put up more than 4 runs in 2 games-- even in a pitcher's park like Petco--which is what its done thus far in the current Padres series. Geovany Soto, Alfonso Soriano, and Ryan Theriot all have OPSes below the league average. Milton Bradley has actually managed to get his slightly above average, in large part by drawing a lot of walks, but still hasn't hit for much power, with 8 HRs and 30 RBI. Aramis Ramirez has continued to hit the ball well since returning from his shoulder injury, but recently had to get a cortisone injection for it and sit out for a few more games. The injury is still going to require off-season surgery, and it seems like any slight tweak at this point might lead to him being shut down for the year. Should that happen, its hard to imagine how the Cubs could recover from it. Jake Fox is the only player who has put up offensive numbers anywhere in the realm of Ramirez, and he's a liability defensively. Largely wasted has been a resurgent year for Derrek Lee. After a few years with a drop off in power numbers, Lee has already hit 24 this year, the most since his ridiculous year in 2005 in which he would've won MVP had the Cubs had a better record.

The most consistent aspect of the Cubs team this year, and the one thing that's prevented the season from going completely off the rails, has been their starting pitching. Recently though, injuries have put a strain on the starting pitching as well. Ted Lilly just came back from a knee injury on Monday and pitched well, though the effort was by the aforementioned 9th inning unpleasantness. Carlos Zambrano is on the DL for the second time this year with a back injury and, in the latest soap opera-like twist for a team that's already made itself really hard to like at times, evidently Zambrano hadn't been doing the abdominal exercises that were perscribed to him because of self-described laziness. This would seemingly be an addition to a pattern that was on display last year, when Zambrano had to come out of several games with cramps because, according to the training staff, he wasn't keeping himself hydrated enough. Zambrano was scratched from the last game he attempted to start before being placed on the DL about an hour before the game, forcing Sean Marshall to make an emergency start, in which he got rocked. Jeff Samardzjia made a spot start about a week or so ago, got similiarly rocked, and is now back in AAA. Tom Gorzellanny, acquired from the Pirates at the deadline, has made three starts since joining the team, and two of them have been good ones, but in the third he allowed 4 runs over 1 1/3 innings and was then taken out after getting hit in the foot with a line drive, although it seemed like the decision had as much to do with his ineffectiveness than his health. The bad starts have required more long relief appearances than the Cubs have needed at any other point in the season, and have subsequently led to a bunch of roster moves to keep fresh arms in the bullpen. Its more than a little frustrating to watch a team with a $100 million+ payroll having to dig deep for arms with such AAA imports as Esmailin Caridad and Justin Berg.

Multiple injuries to key players are going to be tough to bear for any team, but the Cubs' struggles throughout this season nevertheless remain an indictment of the offseason moves by Jim Hendry. The loss of Mark DeRosa continues to be a glaring one. I've written here before that the deal in some ways made sense in that DeRosa was coming off of a career year, and so theorectially trading him would lead to getting the absolute best value for him in return. An article at Fan Graphs recently made the case that it was, in fact, a good deal based on the performances of the three pitching prospects now in the Cubs system. Still, I think it can also be said that it was a bad deal because of the timing in which it occured, when the Cubs are clearly going "all in" in an attempt to win the championship in the next few years. Most of the Cubs' core is either on the decline or will soon be on the decline, and yet all of said players will likely still be in a Cub uniform for the duration of their contracts, which are long and backloaded and will be hard to get rid of. In the past few years, the Cubs' payroll has balooned, and Jim Hendry has signed a number of contracts which pretty clearly overpay players in future years when their production will be diminishing with the hopes of attracting enough top-level talent to assemble a team that can win in the here and now. The DeRosa move, while making some sense on its own merits, wouldn't seem to fit in with the overall direction of the team. In a veritable must-win year, the Cubs lost their best option to back up their best hitter, who has not had a track record of serious injuries such as the one earlier this year, but has been known to require a DL stint from time to time. Really more confounding than the DeRosa trade itself, is Hendry's follow-up move, the signing of Aaron Miles, a utility man who is in the same vein as DeRosa except for the fact that he can't hit. This year he's hitting a putrid .184, and while his career numbers aren't as bad as that, they're certainly nowhere near those of DeRosa, and they're certainly not worth the 2 year, 5 million dollar contract he recieved. If the Cubs don't make the playoffs this year (or if they do, but don't do anything once they're there, again) I'm not sure Hendry makes it out with his job, and I'm not sure that he deserves to.

Do I Make You Randy

The Cubs destroyed the Houston Astros today at Wrigley 12-0, and getting his 7th win of the year was starting pitcher Randy Wells. Wells was never really a top prospect, picked by the Cubs in the 38th round of the draft in 2002, and went to Toronto as a Rule 5 pick in 2008 before he was returned to the Cubs later that year. Next month he's going to be 27, so its taken him a while to get regular playing time in the majors. He came up early in the year when Carlos Zambrano was banged up and was pretty much just expected to be a brief fill-in guy for a couple of turns in the rotation. However, with Sean Marshall needing to stay in the bullpen, and with more recent injuries to Ryan Dempster and Ted Lilly, Wells has gotten a chance to stay around and prove himself, and he's done so spectacularly.

Today was Wells' 15th start and he's now 7-4 with a 2.84 ERA. With 95 IP, he's just outside of being qualified for rate stats for pitchers (the rule is that you need 1 IP for each game that your team has played), but if he had a few more innings, it would put him firmly in the top 10 in the NL. With 60 Ks, he hasn't been a lights out pitcher, but he's also only walked 21. He's generally able to keep his pitch count down and go pretty deep into games. Today he threw 110 pitches and lasted 8 innings. Hitters can definitely make contact off of him, but to this point he's mostly managed to keep the ball in the park and keep himself out of giving up big innings. So, with Wells' performance as good as its been, the question becomes, could Randy Wells win the NL Rookie of the Year? Geovany Soto deservedly won it in 2008, setting up the potential for back-to-back awards for Cubs players--and Cubs players who took a little while to get up to the Majors (Soto was 25).

It's seemingly a pretty down year for position player rookies in the N.L. St. Louis Caridinal outfielder Colby Rasmus, has been up for the whole year and has hit 11 homers, but hasn't hit much for average. Former Cub Casey McGehee is hitting .312 in 60 games for the Brewers, but his performance hasn't really jumped out as being amazing, and he would probably be further hurt by the fact that the Brewers aren't that good right now and might be fading in the divisional race. Wells might have stronger competition from his fellow pitchers. J.A. Happ started in the bullpen but has moved into the rotation for a good Phillies team, and has posted a 7-1 record with a 3.13 ERA. Then there's the 22-year old Tommy Hanson of the Braves, who has only been with the major league club since the start of June, but has gone 5-1 with a 2.95 ERA in 9 starts. The Braves aren't that good of a team, but if Hanson continues to pitch well he might have a little bit of an advantage in that he seems to be a little bit more of a genuine prospect who's expected to become a top pitcher, rather than someone of the journeyman underdog ilk like Wells. If Wells is pitching meaningful games for the Cubs in August and September though--and at this point it certainly seems like he will--Wells should get a good deal of national attention. At any rate it should be interesting.

The Confounding Collapse of the Cubs (alliteration is fun!)

It's been a long time since I blogged about the Cubs, partly because I've been busy with other stuff, and partly because doing so would just be too damn painful. The team that seemed pretty much poised to dominate a weak division again at the start of the year has been stuck in a malaise, with almost no offensive output to speak of. Currently, the team is a game under .500, sitting at 34-35, putting them tied for 3rd in the division, 3.5 out of 1st. No one else has really asserted themselves as a leader in the division--and really the entire NL has just been sort of a big blob except for the Dodgers, who are sitting pretty with a big lead in the NL West at 47-26--and so the Cubs certainly still have plenty of time to get themselves right and take over first, but that doesn't really make the baseball that's been on display in recent weeks any less frustrating to think about.

There's been no singular reason for the team's poor play, but first and foremost among any reasons you want to throw out has to be the injury to Aramis Ramirez. The Cubs haven't really been able to find a good replacement at all for him at 3rd base, not only to replace his offense but also his defense. Much of the playing time at 3rd has been given to Mike Fontenot, who hasn't been a complete wreck defensively, but certainly hasn't stood out as being excellent either. This would be fine if he were able to put out some decent numbers offensively, but as of my writing this, he's hitting .222 with a .670 OPS. Recently, some time at 3rd has been given to call-up Jake Fox, who has hit the ball well thus far, but who is even more of a liablilty defensively. Fox was absolutely tearing the cover off of the ball at AAA, but he's just now getting to the majors at 26 because he's never proven that can can play a good corner outfield at the major league level, let alone at the hot corner. The Cubs's struggles at 3rd base once again raises the spectre of the off season trading of Mark DeRosa for questionable pitching prospects. Last year was a career year for DeRosa and, as I've written before, the Cubs were probably using a mentality of "buy low-sell high", banking on the fact that DeRosa's 2008 numbers were probably a one time thing (although, judging by what he's done so far with Cleveland, maybe not). But even still, even a Mark DeRosa who produces anywhere close to his 2008 output would be a tremendous safety net for what has been the most severe injury for the Cubs this year (severe both in terms of its effect on the player physically, and its effect on the team).

The lack of a good 3rd baseman has been the least of the Cubs's problems, however, and while injuries are always a risk that has to be considered, some of the other issues with the Cubs have been hard to explain. Alfonso Soriano--who, for all his faults, is usually good to be penciled in for an average of at least .280 for so with a bunch of home runs--is currently hitting a meager .229. After hitting .284 in April, his average has gone way downhill from there, and is currenly a sub-Mendoza line .195 in June (as usual, I'm getting my stats from Baseball Reference). Milton Bradley, who has improved to an extent, and is at least managing to stay on the field for the most part, is nevertheless hitting just .238 on the year with anemic power numbers of 5 HRs and 16 RBIs. And last year's Rookie of the Year Geovany Soto, is hitting .231 with 6 HRs and 21 RBIs, and has garnered attention this year more for looking like he got kinda fat, and for having tested positive for pot during the World Baseball Classic than anything else this year. Add all of these disappointing performances up, and here's what you get statistically for the Cubs through 69 games. Compare that to what they did over the same period last year:

2008: .247 Avg., .324 OBP, .400 Slg., .724 OPS, 292 runs
2009: .283 Avg., .361 OBP, .442 Slg., .804 OPS, 380 runs

Its not even particularly close. Aramis Ramirez has been the team's best power hitter in recent years, and there's reason to believe that things will get better when he returns (that is if he can return this year in a healthy enough state to be effective), but clearly a lot more has to change than just Ramirez's absense.

The bullpen has still had issues as well, notably Carlos Marmol, who has still proved difficult to get hits off of, but who has seemingly lost all of his control, walking a staggering 35 guys in 34 innings pitched. What's kept the team from spiraling into a complete nose dive has been the starting pitching, which has been solid all year. Carlos Zambrano, Ted Lilly, and Ryan Dempster all have ERAs under 4.00, and Randy Wells, who pretty much came from out of nowhere, and who was originally meant as just a brief fill-in guy during Zambrano's DL stint, has an ERA under 3.00 in 8 starts. I think the Cubs' rotation is one of the best in the NL, but who knows if its going to hold up at this level, so it would certainly behoove the Cubs to get the problems elsewhere on the team sorted out sooner rather than later. An added wrinkle is the that the Tribune Company's sale of the team is going along at a sluggish pace, and current frontrunner to buy the team, Tom Rickkets is having trouble raising capital for it. As such, many have speculated that the Cubs might not have much wiggle room to add salary at the trade deadline. And so it becomes doubly important for the Cubs to try and work out their struggles from within.

More pitching weirdness and the eternal struggle for the DH

In my last Cubs post, I mentioned how odd it was that Luis Vizciano, who the Cubs had signed to a $3.5 million deal in the offseason, was designated for assignment in order to call up Jeff Samardjia from AAA. The bullpen was going through quite a rough patch at that point--and really still hasn't perfromed as well as one would like--so its easy to see why Lou Pinella and Jim Hendry would want to make a change, but it certainly seemed like a drastic one, especially considering that the team supposedly signed Aaron Miles and let go of Mark DeRosa because of money issues. The difference between Miles and DeRosa, I believe, is only a few million dollars, and here we see the Cubs essentially paying Vizciano 3 1/2 million bucks to basically pitch for two weeks (two weeks in which, for the record, his ERA was 0.00, although I believe he let in some inherited runners). Letting go of DeRosa looks more and more confounding.

Vizciano was officially relased on Monday (bottom of this story), so he's not coming back. The thing is, since getting called up, Samardija has been knocked around quite a bit, and he has now been sent back down again in favor of Chad Fox. I don't think Vizciano was going to have a zero ERA all year. Throughout his career, he's been kind of an average reliever, probably a little better than what you'd consider "replacement level," so I wasn't expecting amazing things about him. However, I have sincere doubts that Chad Fox, who is now 38 and whose career was pretty much over due to a series of major injuries before he got an opportunity to come back with the Cubs, is going to be any better. I'm not sure if the Cubs badly overestimated how much Samardija was ready for the majors or what, but they really shouldn't have put themselves in a position where you're paying a guy $3.5 million to do nothing and then replacing him on the roster with an old, debilitated Chad Fox. Vizciano was never going to be a regular back-of-the-bullpen guy or anything, so maybe this isn't really a huge crisis, but it does look pretty silly on the Cubs' part.

Update: Since I first starting writing this on Thursday (its now Monday), Chad Fox has now been put on the DL with his career once again in jeopardy. In 2 appearances he had a 135.00 ERA. See why this was a bad idea?

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Meanwhile, something which has caused a major freakout amongst Cubs nation has been the injury to Carlos Zambrano, who is going to be out for at least a couple of weeks after pulling his hamstring running out a bunt. Zambrano was safe on the play, and even though he had to be pinch-run for, his run was one of 4 driven in on a tie-breaking Derrek Lee grand slam later that inning. The Cubs ended up winning the game 6-4. In spite of this, starting immediately after the game, a faction of Cubs fans started blaming Zambrano for getting hurt, dreaming up an unwritten rule of baseball that pitchers should never try to bunt for a hit because of the risk of injury. The whole idea of this is pretty bizarre to me. Of course, running out a bunt has the potential for injury, but so does a lot of stuff in baseball. If Zambrano would've swung away on that at-bat and hit a grounder that one of the opposing infielders had to make a diving play to keep in the infield and then throw to first from his knees, is he not supposed to run that out either? If he's in the field, and Derrek Lee has to dive to make a play on a sharply hit ball down the foul line, should Zambrano not run full-out to get over to cover first base?

The point is, the line drawn by fans here as when its not right to "try" on a play, is totally arbitrary. There are many valid criticisms of Zambrano, like his famous temper on the mound that once boiled over into a fist-fight with Michael Barrett, but one thing Zambrano's never been accused of, and for good reason, is not caring enough. This play should be no different. That he cares enough to try and leg out a well placed bunt-and succeed in doing so in an inning that eventually leads to a grand slam--should be celebrated, not criticized. You'll often hear it said that pitching is an inherently unnatural act for the human body. When you consider how many pitchers at some point need major surgery because of a ligiment tear in their elbow or something of that ilk, or see pitchers who get hurt and then lose about 5 miles off of their fastball when they come back and are never really the same pitcher, its easy to believe that statement.

Weirder still, is this Phil Rogers column using the Zambrano injury as evidence that the NL needs to adopt the DH. It seems like most everyone who follows baseball has strong opinions on the DH, one way or another. Either they advocate both leagues using it or both leagues not using it. Having one league use it and one league not seems to bother a lot of people. Personally, its never really bothered me. Its one of the things that makes baseball unique to other team sports, along with each ballpark having its own dimensions. Why should ballpark dimensions be different from place to place but not DH rules? If you believe the MLB needs to have "the standard set of rules that exists in the NFL, NBA and NHL," shouldn't the playing field dimensions always be the same? I like the fact that you can watch two different styles of play on any given night, especially in Chicago with both the Cubs and White Sox on local TV. Even if you're like Rogers, however, and really want the DH implemented, I'm not sure how the Zambrano injury really ties into that all that much. As I already wrote, pitchers can get hurt doing most anything on the field, as can any other player. I'm not sure how you can eliminate pitchers batting and say "Okay, now we've ensured that we've gotten rid of all the pitching injuries that weren't really supposed to have happened." And how about telling Micah Owings that pitchers shouldn't hit.

The Bradley Effect

If you had somewhere around 15 games in your "How long will it take Cubs fans to get pissed off at Milton Bradley?" pool, congratulations, because you win. Bradley is still nursing a groin injury that he suffered on April 12th against the Brewers. On April 22nd, he started in right field and by all accounts he seemed poised to jump back into the every day lineup, but went 0-for-4 with 3 Ks and wasn't running at full speed, and so he has again been relegated to the bench. He has been used sporadically as a pinch hitter, and in one such appearance he made physical contact with an umpire arguing balls and strikes and got hit with a two game suspension. For reasons unbeknownst to me and most everybody else, he has decided to appeal the suspension, even though he could easily have served the suspension while being out with a groin injury with no real added detriment to the team. While he's managed to draw some walks, he's just 1-for-21 hitting, so yes, he has less base hits than he has games suspended as a Cub. Meanwhile, Bradley's contentious relationship with the media, something he was known for in Texas, appears to have manifested itself in Chicago, as Bradley accused the media of taking his quotes out of context and turning the fans against him, even though he didn't really seem to have a specific example of this actually happening. As I'm finishing writing this, the Cubs are playing out in Arizona and Bradley is in the lineup again. We'll see if he stays there this time. 0-for-1 thus far.

The Cubs also recently brought up Jeff Samardjia from AAA and, somewhat curiously designed Luis Vizciano for assignment for the corresponding move. In truth, there weren't a lot of other attractive options. Angel Guzman is out of options, so he pretty much has to stay up, as does David Patton, who is a Rule 5 pick from the Rockies, which means that he goes back to Colorado if the Cubs don't keep him up. But not only had Vizciano not allowed an earned run yet, he was also just signed at the start of the season for $3.5 million. Its possible that Vizciano doesn't get picked up by another team (I want to say that you can pick up a guy that got DFAed for half of his salary, or something along those lines), accepts assignment to the minors, and eventually makes his way back to the Major League club, but as of right now, Vizciano essentially made $3.5 million dollars for pitching 2 weeks. The rightys in the bullpen have certainly been pretty shaky with the exeption of Carlos Marmol, but the biggest issue in the bullpen right now is Neal Cotts, the Cubs' sole lefty. They've been trying to bring him in situationally against leftys in close games, but he's had a ton of problems with walking people. Some people have suggested that Samardjia should go to the rotation so Sean Marshall can head to the bullpen and become a left-handed situational guy. This would seem to be a little extreme, if you ask me. Marshall has looked okay so far as a starter, with a decent-by-5th-starter-standards 4.91 ERA, and Samardjia got roughed up a little bit in his first appearance since getting called up. There doesn't seem to be many good options available though. It wasn't too long ago that the Cubs were carrying 3 leftys in the pen and couldn't find innings for all of them.

The Many Moods of Kosuke

The Cubs are currently 5-4, which may be somewhat underwhelming given their high expectations and the relative weakness of the rest of the NL Central, but, while some of the losses have been quite frustrating, none of them have really disturbed me all that greatly. The bullpen has had some early issues, which Kevin Gregg being less than lights out in the closer's role, and the hitting has been very up and down, but ultimately I haven't seen anything in the nine games played thus far that radically changes my outlook of the team. Geovany Soto has been banged up early on (maybe a product of playing in the World Baseball Classic) and is hitting just .071. You would certainly expect him to heat up. Milton Bradley is also battling a groin injury (of course, Bradley being achey at times during the year was something fully expected going in) and has hit just .056, though he has been able to draw some walks in key situations, and has had enough good ABs to say that he's been helping the club.

One very positive thing amongst the somewhat luc-warm start has been the play of Kosuke Fukudome. Kosuke already has 3 home runs on the year, including a three-run shot yesterday against the Cardinals which, at the time, gave them the lead, though they couldn't hold it. Fukudome wound up with only 10 home runs for all of last year. Of course, early in the season was when Fukudome was at his most brilliant last year, and he's output got progressively worse as the season went on. Will the same thing happen this year? Who knows. What we can do now, though the mighty power of Baseball Reference, is compare what Kosuke did at the start of last season to what he's done 9 games into this season. With a sample size of 9 games, who knows how much its really worth, but whatever, it'll be fun!

Through 9 games:

stat	2008	2009
Avg	.371	.375
OBP	.488	.487
Slg	.543	.781
OPS	1.031	1.268
HRs	1	3
RBIs	6	8
K	6	4

The power numbers are actually better, and the average and OBP are very close. Maybe, just maybe, that with Fukudome-san having a year to get acquainted with the increased travel in the MLB and playing outdoors (lots of domes in Japanese baseball, so I'm told), he'll be able to maintain this pace more consistently throughout the year. Maybe wishful thinking, but it doesn't seem impossible either.

Today the Cubs are playing the Cardinals with Carlos Zambrano on the mound against a 24 year old making his Major League debut. If they lose their third in a row today given these circumstances, I'll be a little bit more down on them than after any of the 4 losses to this point. Whatever happens though, its still very, very early yet.

Early Returns

The first two Cubs games of '09 are in the books, and they'll finish out their first series tonight at Minute Maid Park in Houston. After winning the opener 4-2, the Cubs lost last night 3-2 in 10 innings. Starters Carlos Zambrano and Ryan Dempster both looked very good for their parts, the difference being that Dempster simply got more fun support. Even if Dempster regresses a little bit from his career year last year, there's no reason to believe that this rotation won't be right near the top of the NL. Kosuke Fukudome went 0-for-4 with a strikeout and grounded into a double play in the opener, and really didn't do anything to instill confidence that his 2009 season will be more like his first half of '08 than the second. Aramis Ramirez also evoked some bad memories last night, getting thrown out with relative ease by Carlos Lee playing a ball off the wall on a hit that Aramis tried to stretch from a single to a double. Ramirez has made some pretty awful baserunning decisions in the past, but hopefully that was more a result of the somewhat odd layout of the Minute Maid Park outfield and not part of a continuing pattern.

Two games does not make a season, but just because I talked about it in my last post, I suppose I'll mention what Kevin Gregg and Carlos Marmol have done. Marmol pitched the 8th inning in the opener, and allowed just a walk which he left stranded. Gregg came in to save the game and allowed a couple of baserunner, one of which came around to score before nailing down the save. Gregg then pitched the 10th last night after Neil Cotts put two men on with no one out, and failed to get out of the job, giving up the game winning hit to Jeff Keppinger. Listening to the radio this morning, people seem to already be wringing their hands in concern over this. I'm on record as saying that I think Marmol is the better pitcher, but two games is just a wee bit too small of a time frame to be evaluating whether a change should be made. Same goes for anything that people might be concerned about, frankly. Consider that the defending champion Phillies, fielding much the same team that they won with last year, are 0-2 in their opening series against the Braves, and are losing 9-3 in the finale as I write this. Really the only reason why I am writing this is because I don't have any movies to write about at the moment. Baseball season is a loooong season.

In Closing

The Cubs are winding down Spring Training, and will start the season proper next Monday night in Houston. Nothing terribly eventful has happened in Spring Training, which is a good thing, because really the most eventually thing you can imagine happening is someone important getting hurt. There was a bit of news earlier in the week, though, and somewhat surprising news at that, in the form of Kevin Gregg being named close by Lou Pinella. It was a decision, apparently, based largely off of their performances during Spring Training. Spring Training doesn't give you a really good sample of a player's ability to begin with, both in terms of playing time, and the quality of players they're facing, and Marmol's spring was truncated this year because he played for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic. He did blow a save in the World Baseball Classic against a team of almost entirely minor leaguers in the form of the Netherlands, but that was a) one game and b) party due to bad defense. For what its worth, their spring training stats were as follows (source: mlb.com):

	IP	ERA	H	BB	K
Kevin Gregg	9.1	0.00	4	2	13
Carlos Marmol	9.0	4.00	6	1*	12

*Also had 5 HBPs.

Gregg's stats are certainly impressive, and better than Marmol's, but again, I think its undeniable that Spring Training stats have an inherent unreliability, and personally, I would've made it Marmol's job to lose. Obviously, Pinella is seeing guys work out every day, not just playing in exhibition games, but just looking at what the two did during games, I certainly don't think Marmol did anything that would make you suggest that he was going to be much less effective this year than last year, when he most certainly was playing at a closer type level, even wtih a few big hiccups along the way. Basically, if you ask me, Marmol should be the closer for two reasons:

1. I'm still pretty sure that Marmol is the better pitcher. In his career as a reliever, Marmol's ERA is 2.39 (baseball-reference.com). Kevin Gregg's best full year in the majors was last year with the Marlins, where he posted an ERA of 3.41, and its 3.90 in his career as a reliever. Marmol is also way harder to hit against for both righties and lefties. Gregg's K/BB ratio is better, and Marmol has certainly shown some control issues, but I don't think its really a big enough issue to matter in the face of how much harder it is for opponents to hit off of Marmol.

Really though, even if Gregg starts as the closer, it doesn't mean that he has to stay the closer. And even if he struggles and Lou decides to keep him as closer throughout the regular season for some reason, in theory, the Cubs should be better than the rest of the division to the point where it really shouldn't matter. What matters is whether the Cubs have someone who can be lights out to finish off a playoff game come October (provider the Cubs actually have a lead late in a playoff game this year... rrrr...). That brings me to point 2.

2. Its very much possible that Marmol will have more wear put on him as a set-up man than as a closer. Usually, the set-up man is thought of as the guy who pitches the 8th inning before the closer is going to come in to pitch the 9th. However, there were times last year, when Marmol would be brought in a jam in the 7th, have to work out of it, then continue on to pitch the 8th, sometimes batting in between that time. If you sift through his game log, you'll find a bunch of instances of Marmol throwing 30+ pitches, a couple instances of him throwing 40+ pitches, and on top of that, a bunch of instances of him throwing on back to back days. Dan Bernstein, a radio show host for 670 The Score here in the Chicagoland area, has taken to calling Marmol Lou Pinella's "blankie," because sometimes he seems to be what Pinella uses to make himself feel safe again in whatever tense situation arises, regardless of what sort of rest Marmol has had. Carlos Marmol made the All-Star team last year because he was absolutely lights out for much of the first half, but by the time the All-Star game rolled around, his ERA had ballooned into the fours and looked very un-All-Star like. It took some time for Carlos to seemingly get himself right again. A lot of people suspected this to be due to overuse at the time, and if Pinella uses Marmol in a similar fashion in this year, it'll make a lot of people, including me, nervous again.

Carlos Marmol is 26, and there's no reason why he shouldn't get even better than he is now in the next couple of years and become a perennial All-Star contender. But he's a hard-throwing power pitcher, and, while he hasn't shown himself to be injury prone to this point, all you have to do is look at the rise and fall of a pitcher like Eric Gagne to want to be weary of how much abuse you put on the arm of a pitcher like Marmol. The Cubs are trying to win now, and they should use Marmol to try and win now, but they should do it within reason, with the knowledge that he should be able to help the Cubs now AND in the years to come.

It's gettin' to be about that time, eh chaps?

Baseball season can't get here soon enough. Watching the Cubs get swept 3-0 in the NLDS at the hands of the Dodgers, making a 97-win regular season all for naught, was kind of like getting kicked in the nuts in super slow-motion. Neither a respectable, but not particularly memorable, 9-7 Bears season nor the possibly playoff bound, but still terrible outside of Derrick Rose Bulls have done much to take the sting away. Now here we are and February and, well, that sting is still going to be there for a while. Spring training games just started on Wednesday and we're still a good 7 weeks away from the regular season starting. And to be frank, its hard to imagine the regular season being all that satisfying an experience either. The Cubs won the NL Central pretty comfortably last year, are returning rougly the same team as last year, and the rest of an already pretty bad division would seem to have gotten substantially worse. As such, the Cubs winning the division this year wouldn't be a huge deal at all, and not winning it would represent a monumental collapse. The only thing that's going to remove the sting of getting swept in back-to-back NLDS series is going to be getting back to the playoffs and getting to the World Series. Even still, there's always a degree of excitment that comes with baseball starting up again, so let's talk about it.

Probably thanks in part to the recession, it was a pretty quiet off-season around the league with the exception of the Yankees, who threw massive piles of money at Mark Texiera and C.C. Sabathia. The Cubs are returning a roster that's largely the same at its core but its been tweaked a little bit. The two most significant losses are Mark DeRosa and Kerry Wood. Seeing Wood go is kind of bittersweet because, even with all of his injury issues he's been a member of the Cubs for a decade, and he seemed like a genuinely good guy. Although, I have to say, going to mlb.com and seeing a news story that Wood's back was bothering him and knowing that I didn't have to worry about it was something I can get used to. It seems like Carlos Marmol will be handed the reigns of the closer's job, although Kevin Gregg was brought in as well from Florida and could probably do an adequate job in a pinch. Provided Marmol doesn't have a huge breakdown (and the prospect of that is always going to scare the hell out of me so long as Lou's having him throw 40+ pitch outings and come right back the next day), the loss of Wood shouldn't be hugely crushing.

The DeRosa loss might be a bit more significant. DeRosa was brought in two years ago as a super-sub type of guy, and indeed, he's played admirably all over the field with the Cubs. Last year, though, DeRosa did more than just field a bunch of positions, he put together a career year at the plate, hitting 21 home runs and driving in 87. It would seem that, in dealing DeRosa to the Indians for pitching prospects, that the Cubs figure that DeRosa is not going to repeat that performance again (he did just turn 34), and decided to "sell high" if you will. Still, it is a little disconcerting that, to replace DeRosa, the Cubs went out and got Aaron Miles. Miles is a switch-hitter and the Cubs made it a goal to get less righty heavy after getting shut down by the right-hand dominated Dodgers pitching staff in the NLDS last year. The thing is, compared to DeRosa, even if he starts to decline, Miles isn't really all that good. He put together a .317 average last year with the Cardinals, but even still he had an OPS of .753 which was good for an OPS+ of 99 (an OPS+ of 100 represents an average hitter). The Cubs do have the left-handed Mike Fontenot, who isn't really that great either, but he's younger than Miles and I'm not convinced he'd be all that worse. The Cubs saved a little bit of money trading DeRosa and getting Miles but not all that much. I think the gap in production between DeRosa and Miles is probably wider than the gap in cost. So I think the Miles signing was somewhat dubious.

Maybe the biggest signing of the offseason for the Cubs was Milton Bradley. The reaction to the signing was immediately polarizing amongst fans, as the Cubs gave a pretty lucrative 3 year deal to a guy with undeniable hitting prowess but also with equally undeniable injury problems. Last year, Bradley had a fantastic .436 OBP with 22 HRs and 77 RBIs for the Indians in 126 games, but was used almost entirely as a DH, something which obviously isn't an option for the Cubs. You have to go all the way back to 2004 to find the last time Bradley was able to play in as many games as he did in 2008, when he appeared in 141 with the Dodgers. If he could stay healthy, the switch-hitting Bradley would likely be a huge upgade over Kosuke Fukudome, should he struggle as he did in the 2nd half of '08, but that's an enormous if. Bradley didn't exactly restore confidence in his health by leaving a spring training game with a quad injury after taking a walk in his first at-bat. It seems like the injury is pretty minor, but its hard to imagine a more ominous sign than that. The Cubs also said goodbye to backup catcher Henry Blanco and brought back Paul Bako, who caught alongside Michael Barrett for the Cubs in the '03 and '04 seasons. I don't really understand why they did this, as Blanco is the exact same age, is a slightly better hitter who every once in a while would inexplicably go on a tear offensively, and seemed to do an excellent job of handling the pitching staff. Bako, again, makes them more left-handed, but we're talking about the backup catcher here. Presumably Bako isn't going to be the first option brought in as a pinch-hitter against rightys. I dunno, this move really isn't a big deal, but I always had an irrational love for ol' Hank White.

In terms of the rotation, the Cubs re-signed Ryan Dempster who had a career year last year. He probably isn't going to repeat quite the success that he had last year, and honestly the Cubs probably paid him more than he's worth, but he seems like a genuinely good guy and he's fun to watch pitch. The Cubs also brought in Aaron Heilman from the Mets, who has split time between being a starter and a long reliever throughout his career. Heilman's numbers aren't stellar at all, but he gives them some pitching depth, which is good because its already being said that Rich Harden is going to be good for maybe 20 starts this year. The Cubs also have Sean Marshall still in their back pocket, but they haven't shown a willingness to put him in the rotation and keep him there yet, and he's going to be 26 next year. At this point you have to believe that the Cubs aren't counting on Marshall's upside being all that much more that what he's shown to this point.

Some of the moves by the Cubs are head-scratchers to an extend, but none of them seem egrigiously bad at this point. The Cubs were looking for fill-in guys, and while I'm not convinced that this group of guys is the absolute best to fill those roles, I think for the most part they'll do an adequate job, and the Cubs have a lot to fall back on this year as well. I think they may have overreacted a bit with just how crucial it was that they got more left-handed at the plate, to the point where they brought in guys like Aaron Miles who clearly weren't the best overall hitters out there, but who knows. If the Cubs run into the Dodgers again in the playoffs, which is certainly possible, those leftys may look like Godsends.

Nothing earth-shattering has happened in Spring Training thus far. Carlos Zambrano went 3 IP without allowing a run in his first start. Hopefully that suggests that he'll get off to a good start again in '09 as he did in '08, breaking a streak of a bunch of bad Aprils from years prior, but who knows. As I said, there's only so much you can read into Spring Training games. Micah Hoffpauir has been getting some ABs, and has hit a couple of home runs already. He'll probably make the roster and, hopefully, will hit a couple of those as a pinch hitter later on in the regular season.

That's all I've got for now.

CUBS: The Autopsy

We're now more than a week removed from the Dodgers' 3-0 sweep of the Cubs in the NLDS, and I think I'm not in a healthy enough mental state to try and write about what the hell happened. Firstly, in spite of what I've heard from the more short-tempered fans out there, the Cubs getting swept is in no way a sign that the team has to get "blown up" or rebuilt from scratch. Over in the AL this year, the Angels were baseball's only 100 win team, and they got beat 3-1 in their series with the BoSox, and they had to go to extras to get their only win. That's not to say that people should be happy with the result of the season. The team's goal was to win the World Series and they came up well short of that. As such they underachieved this year and will have to play better come playoff time next year. But these knee jerk "oh woe is us, this team will never win anything, blow it up and start from scratch!" reactions are just silly. Over the three games in the playoffs they played significantly worse than in just about any three game stretch during the regular season, worse enough to make me think that the team does have some issues (not involving goats) regarding the pressure of the postseason and the tremendous weight of trying to overcome 100 years of futility. This is simply not enough reason to get rid of a team that has gone 182-141 over the past two seasons. There are however, sensible changes to the team that should be made.

Firstly, its important to keep in mind what happened. The Cubs only scored 6 runs for the series, and the conventional wisdom is that they simply didn't hit the ball as with the Arizona series in 2007. That's not really entirely true. They hit .240, which is pretty meager compared to their batting average during the regular season, but sizeably better than the .194 that they managed against the Diamondbacks. They actually outhit the Dodgers in game 1, despite losing 7-2. What did happen is, after leading the NL in walks in the regular season, the managed to draw only 6 walks for the entirety of the series against the Dodgers. A lot of credit needs to be given to Dodger pitching, and I don't think they've gotten much of it, at least not from Cubs fans who have been too busy opining about their own team choking. The Cubs bailed them out out by swinging at a lot of bad pitches (I noticed pitching tailing away down and outside seemed to kill them every time for some reason), but the Dodgers also simply threw a lot of strikes. There weren't a lot of 3-0, 3-1 strikes at all during the series, and when they were, they weren't in key situations. The Cubs also seemed to have trouble getting the lead off man on in each inning. The Cubs did get some hits as I said, but they were often times scattered instead of chained together and often with two outs.

As for what the Cubs should do next season, first and foremost they should take Soriano out of the lead off spot. Unlike a lot of Cubs fans who are quick to scapegoat Soriano and a lot of the cockiness and nonchalantness that he shows when things go bad, I still think Soriano is a top-tier hitter and a huge reason for this team's success the past two years. I simply don't think he should be leading off though. As much as he says he's a leadoff hitter, he strikes out a lot, doesn't walk a lot, and hits for a lot of power. He'd be much better in, say, the #5 spot behind people like Lee, Ramirez, and Theriot who, in theory, can get on base at a better clip than can Soriano. Fukudome is obvoiusly a significant problem, ending up the year with an average under .260. That simply can't happen for a starting corner outfielder on a 1st place team. Since Jim Edmonds is probably gone from the team they could move Kosuke to center, where his offensive struggles would be a little more tolerable. There are questions as to how well he can play center though. He could also be platooned with someone like Reed Jonhson and face only righties, against which he consistently looked more comfortable at the plate, but who knows if the Cubs would be filling to have such a high-priced player in a platoon role. Ideally, Kosuke simply gets better in 2009. He'll have a year of major-league experience under his belt, but he's also over 30 years old right now. It's hard to imagine him getting that much better.

The Cubs have already exercised Rich Harden's option, and statistically he certainly deserves to come back. His health remains a huge question mark though. Another question mark is Ryan Dempster. He had a fantastic year on the mound in his first year as a starter since joining the Cubs, but this year was certainly the exception and not the rule for his career thus far. Was the Ryan Dempster who couldn't seem to find the strike zone in the NLDS closer to the Ryan Dempster we'd see in '09 than the Ryan Dempster which looked unhittable at times during the regular season? Good starting pitching is always a preciously rare commodity, but if the Cubs can find a move to make that makes sense they should pull the trigger on it. Its probably time for the Cubs to figure out what Sean Marshall's role is going to be going forward, since he's bounced around all over the place, from the rotation to the bullpen to AAA. Bob Howry's also probably going to be gone from the 'pen. If Kevin Hart and Jose Ascanio can't step up and be effective middle relievers, the Cubs may have to go out and get somewhere there as well. There's been some discussion of the Cubs going out and getting a shortstop and then moving Theriot to 2nd, which is actually his natural postion. It wouldn't be a bad idea. What then happens to DeRosa, though? Would he end up playing right?

Here's to a 2009 season that's as good as 2008's, with a better postseason tacked onto it.

Quick Pre-Playoff Rant

In spite of the fact that this year's Cubs are a team that would probably stand to benefit from it,
I feel the need to point out about how much I hate what they did to the playoff schedule when they redid the TV contracts before last season. Specifically, they added off days to the first two rounds of the playoffs. The LCS round has always been 7 games with a 2-3-2 format, and it used to be that there were only two off days for travel after game 2 and after game 5. Now, the schedule looks like this, with an extra off-day during the middle home stand. The difference this makes is that a team can now pitch their ace in games 1, 4, and 6 with three-days rest in between each start. It doesn't seem right for a team to be able to win a series in 6 games having thrown the same guy out there in half of the games. If you want to pitch a guy in games 1, 4, and 7, then he'll actually get normal rest for game 7. Similarly, all of a team's back-end relievers, who often times will go longer--sometimes much longer--than an inning in the playoffs will have an extra day of rest.

One more off-day in a series wouldn't seem as though it would be a huge deal, but it absolutely does change a team's strategy for managing the pitching staff. The Brewers clinched a playoff spot on Sunday with C. C. Sabathia--who has been far and away their best pitcher (actually he's been the best pitcher in the N.L.) since he was acquired in July--pitching a complete game and allowing only a run. He threw well over 100 pitches and showed no ill effects of doing it on short rest. Think about how much better the Brewers are in a 7 game series knowing that Sabathia could potentially pitch three times in the first six games of the series, especially since Ben Sheets, their ace at the start of the season, is now probably done for the year. I dunno. It's something that bothers me, but possibly only me.

Anyway, Cubs/Dodgers Game 1 tomorrow. Ryan Dempster vs. Derrek Lowe.

While I Was Sleeping (or at least not posting here)

A helluva lot has happened since the last time I posted here. A day after the Carlos Zambrano pitched a no-hitter in an Astros home game in Milwaukee (something that the Astros are still pissed about, never mind the fact that their owner approved playing there), Ted Lilly took a no-hitter of his own into the 6th. On Thursday, the Cubs came from behind to beat the Brewers 7-6 in 12 innings after rallying from down 4 in the 9th inning, capped off by a 3-run Geovany Soto home run (it's hard to imagine him not winning NL Rookie of the Year now). Then, on Saturday, the Cubs beat the Cardinals 5-4 to clinch the NL Central, marking the first time since the league went to divisional play that the Cubs have won their division in back-to-back years, and giving the Cubs back-to-back playoff births since (nearest I can tell) 1907 & 1908.

The Cubs have actually gone 3-1 since clinching the division, despite not playing some of the starters, showing the depth they have as a team. As of right now they stand at 95-60, and have clinched home field advantage in both the NLDS and NLCS (the AL will have home field advantage in the World Series since it won the All-Star game). They managed to win last night against the Mets--who are now even with the Brewers in the Wild Card and behind in the division-- 9-6 in 10 innings, despite the Mets having a man on third with no outs in the 9th against Bob Howry. Zambrano pitched just 4 2/3 innings last night allowing 5 runs in his 2nd bad start in a row since his no-hitter against the Brewers. This is perhaps the only big unnerving thing about the team going into the playoffs, although that was most assuredly his last start of the season and he'll now have about a week to get ready for his first NLDS start against whoever they're playing. Chad Gaudin has recently come off the DL and has gotten rocked around a little bit as well. Hopefully he can come around, as he was a great middle reliever early in his Cubs tenure when the Cubs were absoltuely on fire as a team.

As I type this, Micah Hoffpauir is 3-for-3 with a homer (the first in his career) against Pedro Martinez in the last game of the four game set with the Mets. His average is currently sitting at .367. Meanwhile, though he's had a couple of very clutch hits, Daryle Ward's average at the moments stands at .219. Would Hoffpauir make the playoff roster over Ward? Might be an interesting question going into the weekend. The Cubs have 3 games Friday to Sunday against the Brewers to close out the year.

In more depressing news, the Bears are now 1-2, following up their great season opener win in Indinapolis with back-to-back losses, blowing 2nd half leads in both of them. After the initial optimism that followed the Colts win, fans are ready to jump off a bridge again and are throwing out the ususal rotation of complaints: the playcalling is too conservative, the Bears don't throw downfield enough, the Cover-2 sucks and the Bears need to blitz more, the Bears don't have the "killing instinct" that other teams do... Personally, I think the Bears have just made mistakes in key situations (last week against the Bucs, Peanut Tillman got called for unsportsmanlike conduct for thowing a punch on what ended up being the game-winning drive in OT), and I don't think their overall philosophy, which hasn't changed much since 2006 when they went to the Superbowl, has much to do with it. Despite consisting of Kyle Orton and a hodge-podge of journeyman recievers, the offense has actually been decently consistent. A bright spot has been Matt Forte, who might have a shot at Offensive Rookie of the Year.

No-hitter Alert

More complete Cubs thoughts in the near future, but for now congratulations to Carlos Zambrano for throwing the team's first no-hitter since Milt Pappas in 1972. Zambrano no-hit the Astros, and faced one over the minimum, allowing a hit by pitch and a walk that was negated by a double play. The game was played in Milwaukee after Hurricane Ike hit Houston this weekend, making this quite possibly the first "neutral site" no-hitter ever*.

*In truth, the crowd was mostly Cubs fans as you might expect.

Mama Said There'd be Days Like These

The Cubs lost their 4th straight last night in 11 innings by a 9-7 score at home to the Astros. The 4 game losing streak ties their longest for the season. I haven't been paying much attention to sports radio as of late, but I'm going to venture a guess and say that a lot of Cubs fans are having Platoon style flashbacks of 1969 and are ready to jump off of a bridge. Meanwhile, however, the Brewers-- also losers in extra innings to the Mets last night--haven't really taken advantage of the Cubs' skid and still sit 4 1/2 back in the division. The Brewers themselves are maintaining a 4.5 game lead in the wild card. As much as people are going to play up the CUBS: Completely Useless by September and billy goat curse stuff, it really is nigh impossible for the Cubs to miss the playoffs. For the rest of the regular season there's no cause for alarm. Quote that. Bookmark that. Whatever. I'm quite confident in that.

Of actual cause for concern may be the health of Carlos Zambrano, who left after 5 innings and 86 pitches last night. Z had already been pushed back two days on what was initially just called a tired arm, but now it appears that a real physical problem is there. Zambrano was to see the doctor today, and to my knowledge there hasn't been any news yet on his prognosis. Lou, as you might expect, has been pretty matter-of-fact about it, but that's likely to do little to ease the worry of neurotic Cubs fans everywhere. As amazing as their offense has been, the prospect of a playoff rotation of Zambrano/Harden/Dempster or some combination thereof is perhaps the best thing the Cubs have going for them heading into the postseason. If Zambrano's injury is serious, it would certainly make the road to the World Series significantly tougher.

Bob Howry was awful last night, facing five batters and retiring none of them. He left several pitches out over the plate that got absolutely smoked into the outfield. The outing ballooned his ERA to 5.63, and its an even worse 8.50 after the All-Star break. Michael Wuertz, who was demoted earlier in the year, is back up with the September call-ups and has already pitched twice. I would personally much rather see Wuertz on the playoff roster than Howry, who just doesn't seem to have it this year.

Amidst the doom and gloom (at least relative to how the rest of the Cubs' best season since at least 1984 has gone to this point) there are still some individual guys performing well. Mark DeRosa homered again and got his 80th RBI on the year, and Geovany Soto homered as part of a 3-hit game as he continues to solidify his Rookie of the Year resume.

DeRo

The Cubs have won their last 8 series, and are now 30 games over .500 for what I'm pretty sure is the first time in my lifetime. Rich Harden won the rubber match against the Nationals yesterday, going 7 IP, allowing only 2 hits and picking up 11 Ks. Over his past 3 starts, Harden's allowed six hits TOTAL for a fairly ridiculous BAA (batting avg. against) of .097. Mark DeRosa has all of a sudden shown some power, homering in each of his last 4 games to give him 18 on the year. He now has 77 RBIs on the year, which is already over his career high and he might have a very outside shot at 100+ by year's end. DeRosa's 77 puts him 2nd in team leaders for RBI behind Aramis Ramirez's (91), and he's sort of become the, if not unsung, then "least-sung" hero of the team, especially with the continued struggles of Kosuke Fukudome. DeRosa's done what he has at the plate while playing 5 different positions in the field at least once during the season. I imagine the list of 100+ RBI players having played 5 different positions is pretty short. Also key to the team's recent success has been Jeff Samardzija, who continues to be used as a middle-to-late-innings guy with tremendous success. In fact, as I just discovered while messing around, as of right now the lowest ERA amongst Cubs first-year players with at least 15 IP is one Jeff Samardzija at 1.06 (source: Baseball Reference PI) There's probably going to be a lot of team history set this year.

When You're Hot, You're Hot

When I last blogged about the Cubs they were in the midst of a 4 game series with the Brewers which they entered holding a 1 game lead in the division. As such, something of a mini-panic had seemed to be brewing amongst the more pessimistic portions of the fan base. All that has changed completely since the, as the Cubs swept the Brewers, won 2 of 3 in each of three series against the Pirates, Astros, and Cardinals, swept the Braves, and just tonight took game 1 against the Marlins on a Daryle Ward 3-run home run in the 9th. The hit was Ward's first in his last 14 at bats, one of many things that seems to have fallen in place in just the right way for the Cubs lately. Tonight's win was the 75th for the Cubs on the year. To put that in perspective, last year the Cubs won their 75th game on September 13th, in their 146th game of the year (this game aginst the Marlins was the 122nd for this year's Cubs).

Jeff Samardzija has allowed just 2 runs in his first 13 2/3 IP in the bigs, and will set up an interesting decision when Jon Lieber comes back from off of the DL (he's begun rehabbing in the minors). Lou has shown no hesitation in using Samardzija in close and late situations, and certainly seems to be set on using him for the duration of the season, and maybe even into the playoffs. Right now the weak link in the bullpen would probably be Bob Howry, whose ERA has risen to 5.53, and really has not seemed to have good stuff all year (he's allowed 12 HRs, which is one more than Ryan Dempster has in three times the amount of innings). I'm not sure if they'ed designate Howry for assignment having already DFA'd Scott Eyre, who they signed for big money the same year Howry joined the team. It's possible that they'll hold Lieber out until September 1st when the rosters expand, thus avoiding the entire headache. There's really no reason to rush Lieber back anyway, as outside of Howry the bullpen has been tremendous. At any rate, if these decisions are the most painful the Cubs are going to have to make down the stretch run, it's going to be a very fun end to the season. 100 wins is looking more and more like a real possibility and not a pipe dream.